Mexico in 1999

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The state of the economy and presidential politics were key issues in Mexico in 1999. The economy expanded at a modest inflation-adjusted rate of 3.2%. This growth rate was lower than that achieved in 1996 (5.1%) and 1997 (6.7%) as the country emerged from the devastating 1994–95 recession, but it was a significant improvement over that of 1998, when the economy was buffeted by international financial instability. Consumer prices rose by an estimated 18.4% during the year. Despite renewed growth, the effects of the 1994–95 economic crisis lingered on in the form of depressed incomes for significant portions of the population, continued severe poverty and lack of employment in many areas, stagnation in such vital industries as construction, and politically volatile matters such as the public controversy associated with FOBAPROA, the deposit-protection agency created to absorb a significant portion of commercial banks’ nonperforming loans and thereby stabilize the financial sector. Although the government and opposition parties finally ended a yearlong debate by reaching agreement concerning the final disposition of FOBAPROA obligations, evidence of fraud and mismanagement in the bank bailout remained a heated political issue. Equally troubling over the longer term, the total cost of the bank bailout (estimated in September at $93.4 billion, an amount equivalent to 19.3% of Mexico’s gross domestic product) and the continuing weakness of Mexican financial institutions—especially their inability to provide adequate credit to the private sector—constituted serious constraints on future economic growth.

On the political front, the year’s events were dominated by the start of the 1999–2000 presidential campaign. The stakes were perceived to be particularly high because opposition forces had a realistic chance of winning the country’s highest office and finally dislodging the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) from the political dominance that it had exercised since its founding in 1929.

Several developments were important in this regard. Following the adoption of a new electoral code in 1996, the Federal Electoral Institute demonstrated its political independence and thereby increased voters’ confidence that federal elections would be conducted fairly. The growing political strength of opposition parties—after the 1997 midterm elections, they held a majority of seats in the federal Chamber of Deputies, and they also controlled an expanding number of state and local governments—permitted them to strengthen their organizational structures and forge more durable links with key constituencies. Moreover, because voters appeared increasingly inclined to hold incumbents accountable for poor policy performance, opposition leaders were encouraged that they might successfully exploit dissatisfaction with the lingering effects of the 1994–95 economic crisis and controversies such as the banking bailout to win the presidency in July 2000.

A key challenge facing opposition parties was whether they would forge an electoral alliance capable of defeating a weakened but still powerful PRI. Between July and October an array of opposition groups conducted extensive negotiations over possible terms for a common electoral front. Nonetheless, the centre-right National Action Party (PAN) finally announced that it would not join an alliance with the centre-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD).

Behind this outcome lay a combination of programmatic differences, personal rivalries, and the two parties’ calculations concerning their electoral prospects in 2000, especially in the event that internal divisions within the PRI further weakened the ruling party and significantly increased the odds of an opposition presidential victory. In programmatic terms the two parties were divided over such issues as the privatization of portions of the electrical power generation and petroleum industries and the handling of the FOBAPROA case. Personal rivalry between the two parties’ presidential candidates—the PAN’s Vicente Fox Quesada and the PRD’s Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano—may also have played a role in this regard.

The most conspicuous issue dividing the PAN and the PRD, however, concerned the method for selecting the coalition’s presidential candidate. The PRD strongly favoured an open primary, arguing that a democratic selection process required broad citizen participation. The PAN, whose candidate Fox held a significant lead in public opinion polls, maintained that the coalition’s candidate should be selected through a special opinion poll whose participants would accurately represent the national electorate. The PAN apparently feared that it could not equal the PRD’s capacity to mobilize supporters in a vote held separately from a regularly scheduled national election.

The long-reigning PRI also faced new challenges. Breaking with tradition, Pres. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León announced in March that he would play no direct role in the selection of his party’s presidential candidate. Instead, he advocated an open party primary to choose the PRI’s nominee.

Zedillo’s announcement prompted four prominent PRI members—Manuel Bartlett Díaz, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, Roberto Madrazo Pintado, and Humberto Roque Villanueva—to declare their candidacies. The primary was held on November 7. Labastida, a former agriculture and interior minister and the individual widely believed to be Zedillo’s preferred candidate, captured 58% of the vote to become his party’s nominee.

Presidential election calculations may also have affected the course of two major political conflicts: the continuing stalemate in Chiapas, and a bitter strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In Chiapas, where the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in January 1994 attracted national and international attention by staging an armed revolt in the name of defending the rights of indigenous peoples, negotiations between the EZLN and the government remained stalled, with little prospect of a negotiated solution to the conflict before the end of the Zedillo administration.

At the UNAM, students went on strike in April to protest the imposition of tuition charges and other fees. Although university administrators soon withdrew the fee proposal, the conflict escalated to involve other, more radical calls for restructuring what was Latin America’s largest public university. Neither senior university officials nor the federal government was prepared to pay the high political costs involved in ending the strike by forcible means. As a result, the conflict dragged on amid growing concerns that the dispute might do lasting damage to Mexico’s most important institution of higher education.